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Auto-Ethnography as Literary Critique

Auto-Ethnography as Literary Critique DUNCAN M. YOON Juliana Spahr. Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 248 + viii pp. $29.95. n Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment, Juliana Spahr asserts multiple times that the book should not be read as a scholarly monograph, pur et dur, but as “an auto- biography about how my education told me that certain forms of literature were autonomous when they were not and how long it took me to realize this” (110). In her conclusion, she reasserts this position, writing that the text is an “auto-ethnographic project, an aem tt pt to describe the way literature circulates in the very scenes in which I also circulate” (191). Read in this way, Spahr’s conversa- tional tone and digressive o fl urishes embody an auto-ethnographic style, creating a space wherein she turns her subject mae tt r, Amer - ican literary nationalism, outward facing. The book thereby strad- dles the expectations of an ivory tower audience and the persistent call to render scholarship more accessible through the public hu- manities. Spahr is largely successful in creating an informal, sty- listic atmosphere for this hybrid readership as she struggles with http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Literature University of Wisconsin Press

Auto-Ethnography as Literary Critique

Contemporary Literature , Volume 60 (4) – Nov 14, 2020

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Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Copyright
Copyright © Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin.
ISSN
1548-9949

Abstract

DUNCAN M. YOON Juliana Spahr. Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 248 + viii pp. $29.95. n Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment, Juliana Spahr asserts multiple times that the book should not be read as a scholarly monograph, pur et dur, but as “an auto- biography about how my education told me that certain forms of literature were autonomous when they were not and how long it took me to realize this” (110). In her conclusion, she reasserts this position, writing that the text is an “auto-ethnographic project, an aem tt pt to describe the way literature circulates in the very scenes in which I also circulate” (191). Read in this way, Spahr’s conversa- tional tone and digressive o fl urishes embody an auto-ethnographic style, creating a space wherein she turns her subject mae tt r, Amer - ican literary nationalism, outward facing. The book thereby strad- dles the expectations of an ivory tower audience and the persistent call to render scholarship more accessible through the public hu- manities. Spahr is largely successful in creating an informal, sty- listic atmosphere for this hybrid readership as she struggles with

Journal

Contemporary LiteratureUniversity of Wisconsin Press

Published: Nov 14, 2020

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